Monthly Archives: June 2014

It’s funny now when we hear people talk about vacation we just laugh because our vacations now have turned into race-cations. Since we started triathlons I guess, we started this thing that if we go on vacation, we would look for a race. A couple of years ago we did a short sprint tri when we went to New Jersey, loved the experience of racing out of state and more importantly sharing with my family our newly found hobby, and what better than coming home with a podium… 🙂 can’t beat that. It was funny because one of Felipe’s friends made so much fun of me when I posted my podium hardware on Facebook. He commented “Most people come back with a shirt or a shot glass… Not a podium award” hey… That’s how I roll 🙂

Now of course, all our trips or majority of our trips include some sort of race event, or simply training for something. It is interesting to travel for business… It feels like our workout stuff takes more room that actual business clothes.

Well… This vacation is not the exception, actually we planned our vacation around a race. This time not just a sprint Tri or a 5K like we had done before. We went all out toma Full Distance Triathlon or what some call Iron distance (note I’m not calling it Ironman).

Last year, around September/October timeframe we found out that Challenge Family Triathlons were going to have their USA inaugural race event in Atlantic City. Immediately when we found out we thought to ourselves that it would be a great way to come up for our yearly vacation, race and also spend more than just a weekend with my family. After much debating and consulting the coach about our plans of potentially doing 2 full distance tris this year, he pretty much gave us the ok so we jumped both feet in. We signed up for it, knowing that a few months later we were volunteering and potentially signing up for Ironman Arizona. Fast forward 9 months are we are now at the end of the first chapter of our 2 Full distance Tri journey for 2014.

This journey has been definitely different than last year’s journey to Ironman Texas. You would see from my previous posts or lack thereof, I haven’t really posted much on our workouts like we didn’t last year. This year has been a different type of journey. We haven’t lost respect for the distance, as it is here we are starting to get nervous for it, but we are training smarter. Listening to our bodies more while focusing on our endurance and not just hitting 100% of our scheduled workouts. I’m focusing for instance a lot more in my form during my swims and as a result I have reduced my times by about 30″/100 yds which is amazing. My bike feels a lot stronger and but I’m letting my body recover and I’m focusing more on stretching and core workouts. In my running department, while probably I haven’t gotten any faster but I’m enjoying my runs a lot more and have learned to run on heart rate. I used to hate running with hear rate for a few reasons, 1. Hated the strap (chafing issues) 2. Wasn’t sure what I was doing. So I started doing research and 1. Started using a wrist band hear rate. MIO Link 2. Now understand a little bit more and with that I have been able to run smarter. I think speed will come eventually. For now I’m happy with my progress.

So, we are starting our racecation and we will be doing it with a road trip to New Jersey… Stoping at my parents home for a few days before heading with the family down to Atlantic City for the race. Truck is packed, bikes are loaded, dog is ready, and let me tell you, it feels like we are taking half of our closets with us. Packing for 2 weeks is a lot to begin with, add a triathlon and workout stuff…. Things pretty much double. Now, add bikes, dog, crate, dog bed, etc… Glad we have a truck… 🙂

Stay tunned to our road trip adventures… Hope I can post something when we get to Jersey and definitely when we get to AC and the expo… Hope we can catch up soon 🙂

We question ourselves a lot about why we do this. Sometimes it is not even us the ones questioning, a lot of times we get the question from friends, coworkers, family and others that simply think we are totally insane.

Since we did our first Tri… We were simply hooked. It seems like you either love it or hate it. There are no in betweens with triathlon. With running , for instance, it is a love/hate relationship. You might have a good run one day but an awful one the next day but overall you go back to it. We have been lucky enough that while we’ve had mostly good experiences in tris, they haven’t been so bad that we don’t want to see it again. When it comes to our sanity… I think we lost our mind long time ago… Maybe when we signed up for our first Ironman. Then came the 2nd and then the 3rd. By then the diagnosis was clear and I don’t think I needed a DSM-V to even confirm it…. Just kidding… ALWAYS Consult your Psychologist for diagnosis :).

Again, how about the question… why we do this? In my Trials and Tribulations of becoming a better athlete/person I have thought about it a lot. Clearly I’ve spent enough time in the pool or on the bike or running that I just get to think about those things? you will be amazed what your mind can do. So here are some of my reasons… I’d include Felipe in them because at the end of the day we don’t do it alone… I don’t think I could, here we go:

1. Because we want to be better: I know this might sound like the typical vague answer you hear or perhaps you have used, but I think it is bigger than that. We started exercising because we didn’t want to be “that couple” we didn’t want to just live in the corporate world and not doing anything about our health, or simply doing the bare minimum to it. You always want to drive your car and probably want it to be working perfectly and will invest a good chunk of your salary to either make payments or give it the appropriate maintenance right? Why not do the same with your mind and body? Sometimes it is actually cheaper to maintain the mind and body. I mean really cheap don’t even need a gym membership. By being better I mean, maintaining and trying to be a better wife, daughter, sister and in my case Psychologist… At the end of the day that’s what pays for this and I think my patients definitely benefit from this. They all saw my Dallas Morning News profile and they definitely see me differently.

2. Because we like to push our limits: you might think.., well then just do a marathon, and you are right that’s to some pushing enough. Trust me sometimes during our workout schedules we say to each other… Marathon training is so much better, but I guess at this point our mind has gotten so strong that it doesn’t really listens to the body anymore. It is more of how much further we can make our bodies go. 140.6 miles of pain… That’s I think our limit… The new limit is how many of those we can do :).

3. Your body will thank you later: I know I don’t have the best gene pool when it comes to diabetes, cancer and all of those other diseases that we all try to run away from. Felipe is the same way, including heart disease and a few others. We know we are young and one of the things we don’t want to is turn 50 and have to deal with any of these. It is true that sometimes it is hard to fight genetics, but something I’ve learned is that we can change that destiny or at least delay the process… that’s our train of thought :). Our bodies are sore from our workouts, and we are probably more prone to injuries and accidents but at the end of the day we feel better, which at the end of the day is all it matters.

There you have it… these are only a few of the reasons why I (we) do what we do. Stay tuned for more of my trials and tribulations about a healthy lifestyle. In Spanish we have a saying “mente sana en cuerpo sano” with translates to “Healthy mind in a healthy body”. Let’s keep those minds healthy then… only you can make a difference. 🙂

If you have seen some of my posts on twitter or Instagram you know that we are lab parents. We have rescued 2 beautiful black labs from the DFW Lab Rescue, a local non-profit rescue group in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We rescued our first lab 6 years ago, a few months after we rescued her they were holding a 5k. A fundraiser to help with the costs of running the organization covering vet costs, and other cost associated with this great cause. What is best about it is that it was our first 5k. We knew we could run, simply signed up and maybe “trained” for a couple of weeks, running a few blocks around the house. Race day came up we were just happy to run with our new dog. She was so happy pulling me the whole time and she probably carried the heavy lifting a good 2 miles, but then we jogged back and finished our first 5K together.

Last year we had to put Anise down after finding out she had a spleen tumor that had metastasized in her lungs and heart. We found out after a race and before our Ironman. We waited until after that big race and we went ahead and rescued our JayJay. We fell in love with her, and she did the same with us, making her self comfortable on our bed when the foster mom came to our home visit.

DONE!!!!!

sprint to the finish line

Anyways we have done their 5K a few times, this year being the 3rd year and they had it over the weekend (Saturday). We ran it as usual, Felipe leaving us in the dust, he has gotten podiums before there so he likes it, and JayJay and I stayed in the back with the rest of the puppies. Once again Felipe got his podium and JayJay and I managed to finish it, she struggled a little but I gave her the motivation she knows now which is she will see her “papa” and she started running again looking for him. He was waiting for us at the finish line (as usual) and when she saw him she just started sprinting towards him.

Ice Bath anyone??? feels good

The funniest thing was when we were walking afterward JayJay saw a kiddie pool that was full of ice and water with water bottles and she didn’t think twice and got in it for a nice ice bath. I guess dogs need that too… She didn’t complain as much as I normally do when I get in one… She looked rather happy.

Scout wrapping up his first 5K

We also got to share it with a couple of of Tri-ing friends and their pups, most of us have that in common so we run with our 4 legged kids every once in a while, since we don’t have little humans to push around in strollers we let the 4-legged ones pull us around :).

So with that we did one more 5k, but is a 5k that holds a close place to our heart for many reasons. Like I said before is the very first one, the one that got us off the couch, our beloved Anise who crossed the rainbow and our JayJay who has been a great dog and we love her to death.